Page 9 of Anchored Love
She answered on the fourth ring. “Hey, whatcha up to?”
I had her on speakerphone, so I could talk and cook. It wasn’t rocket science with these meals. The instructions were right there on the card, and all I had to do was follow them. Cooking for one used to lead me to grabbing take-out on the way home. Then I found these. It was a bit better than the greasy burgers.
“Making some garlic chicken pasta and potato wedges while trying to decide how in the heck I’m going to get out of bringing a fake boyfriend on this freaking cruise. Why can’t Drake elope to Las Vegas, or I don’t know, hold a traditional church wedding where it doesn’t matter who I bring or don’t bring? Why does he have to go all out and be fancy?” I rattled on, spraying the skillet with nonstick cooking spray. Why couldn’t he have the wedding in Idaho or do it at the courthouse? In Mom’s backyard under a tent.
“Doesn’t he know bad things happen on cruises? I watch the news. People get sick and quarantined. Sometimes they disappear. There was that one couple on that murder mystery show the other night. They were newlyweds, and she fell overboard or something, and they never found the body. He thinks she had a fake identity and faked her death. The whole thing’s wild. Cruise ships are dangerous.”
Jesus. I sounded like my little sister. Jess was the one who went on crazy tangents about this sort of stuff; not me. Maybe I could convince Drake that traveling right now would be unsafe and they should wait like say … six months. I mean, surely I could find a date within six months. That wasn’t being unreasonable if I asked them to postpone a little while. In the grand scheme of things, six months was nothing. They’d waited this long.
Man, I sounded like a selfish bitch and needed to snap out of it. This was my brother. To hell with me being comfortable. It wasn’t about me.
“Dude, stop complaining; you’re getting a free vacation. Shoot, I’ll go in your place.”
“What if I said I had chickenpox or mumps … measles?” I threw out there, tossing the potatoes in and watching them brown.
“Haven’t you gotten all your vaccinations?” Samantha laughed as did I.
“That’s beside the point.” I wondered how much a male escort would run me. Or if they had mail-order husbands like brides? I could marry him before the trip then have it annulled… Yes, I had totally lost it and took the first bus to crazy town.
“I doubt your mom would buy that lame excuse.” Hell, I didn’t even buy it.
“Food poisoning?” I challenged, egging it on.
“Ev, be serious.”
“I thought about staging a fake breakup the day of the cruise, but for that to work I’d still need to find a fake boyfriend.” I moaned. “I’ve got it. I’ll pretend I’ve broken out in hives.”
“And why will you have hives?” She pressed, and I stirred my pasta.
“I don’t know. I’ll say I’m allergic to people and confined spaces.”
“My trainer’s single.”
“Your trainer?” I rolled my eyes. “That would certainly shock my mother if I brought another woman. But I don’t want to give her a heart attack.”
“Why don’t you just suck it up and ask Mason? He was totally checking you out earlier,” she started.
“No. Hush. Mason doesn’t look at me in that way.”Does he? I wished I could reach through the phone and knock some sense into her, but the gears were already in motion. She’d planted the seeds.
“Hate to break it to you, Ev, but Mason is hot as fuck. I know what I saw and the vibes I caught between you two. There’s chemistry between you. Mason is gorgeous; can you imagine what he’d look like without his shirt on? You’d get to stare at that fine-ass man for what, seven or eight days? I don’t see the problem. I mean, this could be a good thing.”
“You know the company policy.” I finished the sliced chicken and added it to the pasta, ready to eat.
“Who’d tell them? It’s one week.”
“You know I’d be the poor soul to chance something and wind up being the example. They’d fire me.”
“Just think about it.”
I didn’t want to think about it; there were too many repercussions, but there was that little thought of what-if planted in my head of Mason without a shirt on. Mercy. His abs alone were tempting, then you’d add in the rest of him … pure perfection.
Hanging up with Samantha, I dumped my pasta, chicken, and potatoes into a bowl, tagging a fork from the silverware drawer. I poured myself a glass of Moscato and went to the living room. I sat my bowl on the arm of the couch and clicked the TV on to catch up on mindless reality television. The great thing about reality TV, it made me feel like I had my shit together even in a predicament such as this. Moocher pawed at my ankle, wanting me to put him on the couch with me so he could bum bites of chicken.
“Come on, Moochie baby.” I lifted him up and gave him a morsel of chicken. Damn, I forgot to ask Samantha if she’d keep him while I was gone.
Deep down I knew there would be no getting out of the cruise, and truly I didn’t want to, but it didn’t stop me from dreaming up new ways to stop it from happening. Faking my own kidnapping sprang to mind, but then there’d be an investigation, and I’d likely go to jail. Orange was not my color. It was not the new black for me.
Moocher whined for more chicken, and I gave him another piece. My boy was spoiled rotten. He trained me well and not the other way around.
